1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer motherboard organization and more particularly to applying user selectable configuration settings during bootstrap.
2. Description of the Related Art
The computer has evolved over time from a massive collection of electronic and electrical components to a tightly integrated marvel of technology packaged within the smallest imaginable confines. The computer generally includes a motherboard hosting multiple integrated circuit chips. The motherboard chipset for a computer generally includes a central processing unit (CPU), dynamic and non-volatile memory, and one or more peripheral devices. Modern motherboard designs incorporate both a north bridge chipset and a south bridge chipset. The north bridge chipset is responsible for controlling data transmission among the CPU, dynamic memory and a video display. The south bridge chipset, by comparison, manages communications between the CPU and the peripheral devices.
Exemplary peripheral devices include legacy bus technologies such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) slots and industry standard architecture (ISA) slots, fixed drive drives, universal serial bus (USB) controllers, local area network controllers, fire-wire controllers and the like. The latter require relatively high transmission speeds and enjoy near direct access to non-volatile memory, while the former peripheral devices do not require high transmission speed to transmit the data and store data through an input/output (I/O) chipset. Notably, the south bridge chipset manages access to the basic input output system (BIOS) utilized during bootstrap to initialize the operational functionality of the underlying computer.
In modern computing systems, non-volatile memories like FLASH memory containing the boot code of the BIOS are increasingly supported by the north bridge chipset rather than the south bridge chip set. In consequence, the basic functionality for the computing system can be enabled immediately after power on reset of the motherboard before establishing a communicative path from the CPU to the south bridge. Thus, the CPU can execute the boot code in the BIOS through the north bridge chipset and, as a result, the computing system can be configured at an earlier stage of bootstrap. Still, user configurable options associated with the BIOS remain in battery backed up non-volatile storage managed by the south bridge. Thus, user configurable options cannot be applied during bootstrap until a communicative path has been established between the CPU and the south bridge chip set.